Vehicle ignition sensing is conventionally obtained by sampling a variety of electro-mechanical phenomena related to the engine and ignition circuitry. Prior art attempts suffer from disadvantages, including installation difficulties (e.g. properly calibrated connections are required to the various electro-mechanical sensors related to the vehicle engine and performance attributes thereof) and quiescence characteristics of the electrical systems (e.g. the effective capacitance and inductance of many circuits differ in their timing characteristics and often resist rapid changes in voltage and thus are untimely sources of information and inference during the transition towards recognizing the “off” state of ignition).